FAMILY RESEARCH REPORT	Journal of the Family Research Institute Founded 1982
The High Cost of Sodomy: Part II			Vol. 19 No. 3 May 2004

Editor's Note: The last issue of Family Research Report examined some of the personal medical and social costs associated with homosexual activity, especially costs incurred by those with AIDS. This issue continues our look at the financial burdens imposed by our society's toleration of sodomy. More than ever, a sober examination of the costs of sodomy is needed. For as ‘gay marriage' comes on line, FRI expects the situation to only worsen.

A fatal disease such as AIDS costs society more than medical care. Indirect costs also enter in. There is the cost of having raised and prepared the AIDS patient for productive work. Think of the food, medical care, education, etc. that it takes to get a child ready for employment in our modern society. Think of the lost productivity due to that individual not being alive or physically able to be employed in his 30s, 40s, 50s, or 60s.

There are also costs for his employer while he is still alive. These include higher insurance premiums and having to periodically fill his position when he is getting medical treatment or feels too poorly to work, etc. And then, of course, there are the costs of finding and training his replacement. Los Angeles Times reporter Jennifer Oldham 1 estimated these employer costs at $32,000 per AIDS-employee over a five-year period — that is, over $6,000/year.

Oldham also estimated that the indirect cost of AIDS was about seven times the direct medical cost. Of course, today people with AIDS are living longer — and more of them are able to work for a while. In 1995, it was estimated that medical costs for an AIDS patient were running about $35,000/year. These costs in drugs and medical treatment often continue until the patient dies. So if a homosexual practitioner lives 5 years with AIDS, direct medical costs will total about $175,000 and the indirect costs about $1.2 million. If he lives 8 years the direct costs will total about $280,000 and the indirect costs about $2 million.

Lives Lost To Sodomy

As of December 2002, of the 501,669 deaths from AIDS in the U.S., 286,018 or 57% were among males-that-have-sex-with-males [MSM]. 2 So AIDS has disproportionately killed those responsible for its spread. But many more have been killed by AIDS than just homosexuals.

Hemophiliacs and those who needed a transfusion have died from HIV contaminated blood. To date, these deaths have totaled 3 about 13,000. MSM bear most of the responsibility for these deaths. Since a little over half of those who have gotten HIV are homosexual, at least half the total of the blood bank infections — about 6,500 deaths — are fairly allotted to MSM.

But there is more to it than that. Not only did homosexuals donate infected blood, they were the only group that threatened to do so purposely. And they have offered the only clear, recorded evidence of deliberate infection.

As former Congressional Representative Bob Dornan told an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference [CPAC] in the early 1980s, his sister — then working at UCLA medical center — had caught homosexuals with AIDS urinating on their hands and then wiping it on door knobs and other surfaces in an attempt to infect the nursing staff. Since it is unlikely that there is enough HIV in urine to cause an infection, it is also unlikely that this ploy succeeded in infecting anyone. However, a gay activist in Texas made news when he called for homosexuals to deliberately contaminate the blood supply to ‘get funding' for their treatment. It is unknown whether or how many gays followed his marching orders, or how successful his followers were in causing infections. But the threat was made and widely advertised.

A number of physicians and nurses have told FRI staff of deliberate attempts by homosexuals to infect them while they were ministering to them. For instance, one homosexual receiving an intravenous treatment jerked his arm in such a way that the nurse ended up sticking herself with the needle as she adjusted it. In this instance, she was not infected — nevertheless, around 200 medical personnel have died of AIDS by treating the infected. Since homosexuals make up over half of those with HIV, at least 100 of these deaths were arguably due to treating MSM.

And then there are the sodomized boys who got infected by adult MSM and subsequently died. At least 2 boys who died after being sodomized by a homosexual have made the news in the past 24 years, but media reports have also spotlighted at least 235 boys who were sexually molested by an HIV-infected gay. How many of these boys were infected and how many died is unknown.

Overall, while MSM have mainly infected each other, there has also been an infection toll on those who do not engage in homosexual sex. As a conservative estimate, at least 7,000 individuals in the U.S. who were innocent of sodomy themselves paid the ultimate price for the sexual pleasures of homosexuals. This tranlates to roughly one individual for every 41 MSM who have died of AIDS.

Quarantine Would Have Worked

Most of the costs associated with AIDS could have been avoided. But avoidance would have necessitated quarantine, if not to individual abodes, then at least the shutting down of the homosexual infrastructure — gay bathhouses, gay bars, gay sex clubs, etc. Of course, those who engage in sodomy do not like being the subject of derision, much less the object of quarantine. Homosexual practitioners are no less obsessed than those who want a sex-change operation — they want to be considered ‘normal' in every respect. They also want society to accept their desires as ‘reasonable' and beyond that pay the costs for their choices. In the case of ‘sex changes,' these costs include genital mutilation; in the case of sodomy, the tab involves medical and other costs.

Is it a person's ‘right' to be allowed to have sex as they see fit and to possibly infect others? You won't find it anywhere in the Constitution, but that is indeed what the American public health establishment has decided. Quite recently, quarantines have worked to limit the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome [SARS]. No one seriously questioned the legitimacy or need for such measures. But when it came to sodomy, the idea that persons might not be able to have sex with whom they wanted was considered repellant by U.S. officials. Unfortunately, this newly-established ‘right' has had tremendous and costly consequences.

In a recent article, researchers Hansen and Groce 4 spotlighted one country, Cuba, which “did not recognize individual rights as an impediment to its public health measures,” and imposed quarantine on those with HIV. By 2002, the public health success of the Cuban policy was acknowledged — Cuba had a rate of HIV infection “nearly 11 times lower than that in the United States.”

From a cost or risk-benefit perspective, an obvious question is raised. Because homosexuals make up a relatively small minority, why should everyone else (including, but not limited to, the taxpaying public) have to chip in, pay for, and/or incur extra risk of disease or death, all for the sake of sexual pleasure?

Foundation for Sodom Being Laid

In the 11 th century, one of sodomy's harshest critics, Peter Damian, opined that those who practice sodomy “strive to rebuild [the walls] of devastated Sodom.” The West seems intent on doing just that.

Sodomy is worse than worthless to society. It not only contributes nothing to future generations, but costs society in treasure and lives. Marriage is key to society — within it, a secure future is born and raised. Viable societies have always lauded and honored those who were married with children — the married are ‘the core' of any successful society. In recognition of this, society discriminates for man-woman marriage and discriminates against any other sexual arrangement.

Yet many movers and shakers in our society are calling for the equivalency of ‘homosexuality' and ‘heterosexuality.' In addition, they would make no distinction between ‘shacking-up' and being married.

Implementing this form of ‘equality' will be quite costly. Bruce Steele, editor of The Advocate , the leading homosexual rights magazine, reveals the extent to which society will have to be changed to accommodate members of the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transsexual coalition. In a recent editorial, 5 Steele says:

“Forget about moral decay and Leviticus and AIDS and ‘natural order' and the ick factor, those are just excuses. The right's real argument against same-sex civil marriage comes down to this: If gays get marriage, being straight will no longer get you special rights. Homosexuality will at last be as normal as heterosexuality.”

Steele is quite correct. Sodomites live out an inferior lifestyle, incurring greater personal risk and presenting greater danger to society through their preferred activities. Because their relationships are inferior to traditional marriage, society is right to single out sodomy as being destructive and self-serving. In fact, proponents of sexual equality have to actively deny the real consequences and costs to society of homosexual behavior. Otherwise, they would be forced to admit that it ought to be suppressed for the common good.

Presumably sodomy is fun — or people wouldn't do it. Those, including mental health experts, who claim that sodomites have to have homosexual sex are clearly throwing up a smokescreen. Look, for instance, at all the monks and nuns through the ages who have managed to avoid sex (and generally live longer lives than the average). Yet sodomy does nothing of value other than entertain. Society certainly doesn't need it like it needs men and women to procreate and nurture the next generation. So why should society give equal status to worse-than-worthless same-sex relationships? Why should we shoulder all of that cost?

References:
1. The economic cost of AIDS, 10/13/95.
2. CDC, HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report .
3. CDC, HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report , v. 14, Table 7.
4. Hansen H, Groce N. Human immunodefiencey virus and quarantine in Cuba. JAMA , 2003:290;2875.
5. The Advocate, 1/20/04, p. 19.

Homosexuals in Real Life

Experiences with any thing or kind of person tell us a lot. Consider these two letters from professionals who have dealt with homosexuality.

A retired Pediatric Surgeon from the Southwest wrote:

• “I have known three gay Pediatricians, two of whom were married and had children. One had a wife who impressed me as being a lesbian. Their son, whom I saw as a patient, was a weird 18 year-old. The unmarried fellow had a domineering mother who was also a Pediatrician, and a much older father who died early.
  
• “The best Pediatric anesthesiologist I ever worked with is gay. He works in Dallas. He lives with a “Bruto”-like (from Popeye) decorator. We had Martina Navatolova — the tennis star — here. She stole the wife of an MD Internist friend (Judy Hill Nelson). They split later. Big lawsuit, etc.”

• “Recent experience with gay/lesbian parenting has left a caring psychiatrist disappointed and concerned. For the sake of the children involved in these families, he had hoped to find some positive parenting environments. Unfortunately in his small sample of about a half a dozen gay and lesbian parenting families, which represent the total number of cases he has been involved with over a twenty-five plus year career, he has yet to find a really positive environment.
• “His most recent case from a few months ago involved a young adult male who had been raised in a lesbian home. During his growing up years his mother had multiple lesbian partners which tended to create an unstable home environment. When he was a child (under the age of 10) one of her partners had sex with him on several occasions. At the time he was so young he wasn't sure what was happening. His mother was physically abusive to him (at one point actually cut on his arm) and ‘helped' him get into the use of street drugs. He felt she also encouraged him to become gay. He is heterosexual in orientation, but has very serious emotional problems and has mixed feelings of both love and strong hatred for his mother including homicidal ideation towards her.
• “Some months earlier this psychiatrist had also been involved in a case involving a young bisexual male who had been sexually molesting his young (under age 6) ‘stepson.' The male had previously self identified as ‘gay' until a one night stand with the child's mother convinced him that he was bisexual. He admitted to having oral sex with her son. The sexual abuse stopped when the child's mom caught them being involved sexually.”

Real experiences by real people are a kind of information that seldom reaches the press or professional articles. While every homosexual these professionals encountered was not ‘a creep' or ‘a troublemaker' (at least to their knowledge), the harm done by those who practice homosexuality to personal and public health, and to the social order, is fairly evident.

Abstinence Pledges May Work

Though the press reported it as a failure, the first clear evidence on ‘pledges not to have sex until marriage' indicates they may work. Although six years after making the pledge to remain a virgin, 88% of pledgers did have sex before marriage, this figure was a bit better than the 99% of non-pledgers. Plus, the pledgers delayed sexual intercourse on average for 18 months longer than the non-pledgers, had fewer sexual partners, were somewhat less likely to use condoms (40% of male pledgers vs. 59% of non-pledgers reported using condoms regularly), and tended to get married earlier.

Most news stories focused on the failures of the pledgers. For instance, among the 12,000 adolescents who were tested, 2.8% of the white pledgers vs. 3.5% of the white non-pledgers, 18% of the black pledgers vs. 20% of the black non-pledgers, 11% of the Asian pledgers vs. 5.6% of the Asian non-pledgers, and 6.7% of the Hispanic pledgers vs. 8.6% of the Hispanic non-pledgers reported a sexually transmitted disease [STD]. While these differences are not large, once again the pledgers generally scored better.

The pledgers were more frequently religious — so precisely what effect the pledge itself had is difficult to determine. Greater commitment to their faith may have led them to both make the pledge and inhibit their sexual activities. It is also the case that any voluntary program of personal behavior modification is only likely to net small overall effects. Think for instance of the difficulties most have with diet or exercise regimens, or with pledges to quit smoking.

In fact, while most of the media called the lack of a substantial difference in STD rates between the pledgers and non-pledgers a failure (e.g., the Wall Street Journal headlined the story “Sexual-disease rate unaffected by virginity vows” 3/10/04), the small differences between the two groups of teenagers would translate into significant social costs ‘saved' on behalf of society by the pledgers.

Small changes in STD, pregnancy, or abortion rates can have large social effects. A year and a half is a long time in the life of a 12-18 year old — delaying entry into sex for that long is an important effect, especially considering that these years are some of the most sexually stimulating of life. Indeed, through much of recorded history — until quite recently — marriage was often contracted in the early to mid teen years. Only in modern times have teenagers been expected to remain chaste until their twenties or later.

According to the media spin, the pledgers also ‘failed' by not regularly using condoms as often as the non-pledgers. Notice, however, that although the non-pledgers were ‘better' at using condoms (or at least claiming to use condoms), that fact did NOT clearly translate into reporting fewer STDs. The white non-pledgers — who better used condoms — were 25% more likely to get STDs , yet 48% more apt to use condoms than the white pledgers.

All in all, it appears a bit much to imply that abstinence vows are ‘worthless,' even while condoms are the ‘salvation of youth.' It is also interesting that this study was released to the press before it had passed peer review and was published in a scientific journal.

Corner

The Expansion of 'Hate Crimes'

Homosexuality is particularly ‘sticky entertainment.' Like drug addiction, it's hard to break away from. But homosexuality transcends ‘sticky.' It is so all-consuming that it tends to degrade the logic and character of those who indulge in it.

A case in point are the so-called “hate crimes.”

The Colorado Anti-Violence Program , a gay rights front group, reported “most of the increase in bias-motivated violence happened in the second half of 2003 in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down a Texas sodomy law…. ‘Visibility equals targeting' said [the] executive director.” Sounds reasonable — in a way. Common folks resent the Supreme Court catering to nitwits who are obsessed with their homosexual activities, so a few of them beat up on “fags.” Right? Not quite.

Of the 151 incidents of ‘anti-gay hate,' the Anti-Violence group included “52 arrests of people in Adams County parks in November who were charged with indecent exposure and unlawful sexual contact.” Come again? The police are perpetrating a ‘hate crime' by arresting those trolling for or engaging in public sex?? Yes!!! If you are consumed by homosexual desire, everything else pales in comparison. Those trying to have a ‘little fun' in public shouldn't be discriminated against by the cops!

The law, public order, what children might see, others using the park without having to run into a sexual tryst — all these considerations were irrelevant. Homosexual sex first and always to those addicted. The selfish pursuit of sexual pleasure trumps everything else.

The logic of counting arrests as ‘hate crimes' demonstrates where the movement is going. First, gays wanted ‘tolerance.' Now they are to the point of pressuring for the right to have sex in public (they pay taxes that support the parks, after all). Make no mistake about it, down this road apiece is the demand that ‘every child have the opportunity to find out' if he is ‘gay' — and there is only one way for any child to know for sure….

Also counted among the ‘hate crimes' was a fellow who met gays in bars, went home and had sex with them, and then stole their checkbooks and credit cards. So a homosexual who steals from other homosexuals is also committing ‘hate crimes.'

Interestingly, confirmed assaults against homosexuals actually decreased from 43 in 2002 to 26 in 2003, and injuries dropped from 42 to 39. (Kirk Mitchell, Denver Post 4/29/04, p. 3B)

You have to be careful what entertainments you choose — what starts out as ‘fun', ‘interesting,' or ‘a lark' can end up controlling you. Societies have to be careful lest they aid and abet such foolishness. Any number of people want to do ‘strange things' — have their legs cut off, their genitals mutilated, have sex with dogs, etc. The stories and claims of those obsesed by unusual desires may sound so ‘compelling' that ‘compassion' seems to demand a response to ‘help them.' But, giving them what they want rather than what they need is a disservice.

More Confirmation: Troubled Kids Doing Troubling Things

Kids who find homosexuality amusing are different – either they started out that way, homosexual experiences transformed them, or a bit of both. In 1994-95, a large number of U.S. adolescents were randomly drawn from grades 7 through 12. A sample of 9,218 boys and 9,581 girls was then questioned regarding their sexual activities. 1 About two-thirds of both boys and girls reported at least one sexual partner by age 16.

When broken down by type of sexual partner, the results were rather revealing. The 2.3% (n= 223) of girls who reported a same-sex sexual partner by age 16 were almost twice as apt to smoke, almost twice as apt to have used illegal drugs, one and a half times as likely to have engaged in anal sex, twice as apt to report suicidal thoughts, twice as apt to be depressed, twice as apt to score as delinquent, and 11 times more apt to have engaged in prostitution.

Results for the boys were equally stark. The 1.6% (n= 144) of boys who reported same-sex sexual partners were 8 times more apt to think they would be killed by age 21, 3 times more apt to think they would get HIV, twice as apt to smoke or use illegal drugs, 5 times more apt to have engaged in anal sex, twice as likely to report suicidal thoughts, twice as apt to be depressed, twice as apt to score as delinquent, and 8 times more likely to have engaged in prostitution.

On the flip side of the coin, 60% of kids who had never had a sexual partner lived with both of their biological parents, compared to 40% of kids who had engaged in homosexuality (and 50% of those who reported heterosexual sex).

Doesn't this look familiar? EVERY sexuality survey (and they are getting larger and more representative of the population as time goes on), finds the same things. Kids or adults who are ‘into' homosexuality are troubled individuals doing troubling things. Meanwhile, kids who are living with both of their parents are generally the ‘best kids,' getting into the least amount of trouble.

Reference:
1. Udry, J. R. & Chantala, K. (2002) Risk assessment of adolescents with same-sex relationships. Journal of Adolescent Health , 31, 84-92.

Family Research Report critically examines empirical data on families, sexual social policy, AIDS, drug addiction, and homosexuality, digging behind the 'headlines' and breaking new scientific ground.

FRR is published 8 times/year by the Family Research Institute.

Dr. Paul Cameron, Publisher
Dr. Kirk Cameron, Editor

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